Kranti in OpenIDEO

My ‘love affair’ with Kranti began with a volunteering gig almost two years ago. And when the time came, I moved into working with them- and it has been one of the best roller-coaster rides I am on.

Challenging, learning new things (who ever thought I would need to learn budget statements?), responsible for 15 other persons and lots and lots of collaborations.

And this has been the latest in the rolling..

A big idea to take alternative education to the streets of Kamathipura- inspired by the ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’- Its funny how the Marxist discourse on education, space, production and life keeps returning to me.

I wanted to be so many things—-I enjoyed reading for the sake of reading, I enjoyed learning for the sake of learning—-

I always enjoyed school and college- mostly, spending most of my time with friends to start with and, then, with ‘boyfriends’. The grades were good. But I know that so much of my mind was spent in filling an emptiness – a gap- a misguided search for love.

I almost flunked out in 12th because most of the subjects did not interest me at the time and I was only interested in experiencing the city, the movies, excellent meals. The chemistry teacher told me, because I was failing her class, that I would fail 12th grade at this rate -not that she took any special initiative to help me or make the subject exciting but she was dealing with 100 odd students in each class, so. And it was this fear of failing that made me spend a whole month cracking chemistry and I ended up with a 80+ out of 100 marks—-though in the process, I ignored the other subjects and scraped through a few (Clearly, if I put my mind to things, majic happened…)

I avoided engineering school by opting for architecture- I winged it, mostly, for the first few years, showing an aptitude for some things and disinterest in the rest. My renewed affair with learning began, way late into architecture school, as a way to please someone- a boy, a smart boy. I will always be grateful to him for that and other things…

My confidence was shit and I worked hard to keep up with him, I put in the hours, the thinking- and in that, I found the joy of work, the joy of making… The romance with the boy ended- among other things, a lot of good was left behind. The rigor of reading and writing restored—and involved in the design of movements and ‘products’.